Process of Home Design for Minecraft Players

The first buildings for many players are in their own words, whether ugly or impractical. On the forums, a lot of questions touch  housing building issues. The topics range from the basics to more advanced architectural concerns: the most effective wall decor of rooms, stairs. It’s hard to build a great house.

Players discuss the design, often without even realizing it. Players must work with limitations and principles for achieving goals. Terrain, availability of materials and monsters are all constraints. The main goal is security, collect resources, and ultimately comfort. The game is a great training ground for design thinking.

You should make countless decisions and navigate conflicting requirements when planning the edification of your home. It is very easy to start on laying blocks, without thinking through all the issues. Moreover, the endless possibilities of the game make it very easy to lose track of your goals and fall victim to scope-creep. Often the building is ultimately unsatisfactory because of poor planning or lack of discipline. To keep oneself wandering in the wrong direction, it helps to borrow insights from design processes. Here is the  suggestion:

Write down what you want to achieve and why. This will force you to focus and make it harder to tell yourself. “The tower may be higher or the walled area bigger”

Do research. Be curious. Experimentation in creative fashion. Read more about the behavior of monsters and properties of blocks. Read the wiki and forums. Once you have all the facts, look for art direction: collect pictures and information about the troglodyte settlements, villages, castles, canals and others.

Select a site. The sides of mountains or peninsulas is the best choice. You should take the next biomes and locations of installation in mind when choosing your site and design access points. Sources for materials should be easily available. Moreover, the rising and sunset to be considered in your window and door placement decisions.

Doodle. A quick doodle often makes the difference between OK and great. Use photographs from your research to the exterior. Classical proportions of 1:1.618, 2:3, 3:4, may be useful to decide the volumes. Also think of floorplans. Place doors, stair and rooms to suit your workflow: to feed wild animals, harvest or mine,  smelt in furnaces, store your treasures, etc. In order to feel good circulation in your home should be as seamless as possible.

Plan the construction. To see if your design fits the terrain, and if the proportions are elegant, draw up the floorplan on the ground with a shovel. Ready to build? Estimates of the necessary materials and assemble them. Set the torches all over your terrain, to keep monsters from spawning and build a shelter with a bed close to the building to save time.

Imagine yourself using your buildings and think through the issues before laying the blocks. For your gaming to be great, think about function and form second. You will be amazed what you can achieve.